The Sand Pebbles (35 page)

“You are right. It is not a good story to teach Chinese boys,” she said.

“Mr. Mills chose it. I know,” he said. “Mr. Mills is stupid. He knows mathematics only by rote, the way he makes us learn poetry. He wants us to learn mathematics that way.”

“I don’t approve of learning even poetry only that way.”

He turned his face from the window to face her smile. He gave her a quick, mischievous, sharing smile.

“Let’s not do it, then.”

“But after all, Mr. Mills—”

“I’ll tell you a secret. Many students at China Light are secret members of the Kuomintang,” he said. “I am one. If General Pan knew, he would send soldiers to kill us.”

“Oh, Cho-jen! Surely not!”

“He would. If Mr. Mills knew, he would tell General Pan.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t. But I won’t say anything.” She felt frightened. “If you’re right, you shouldn’t tell me such things.”

“You are good. All the boys want to love you.” A sparkling, elfish look was growing on his face. “We have groups in both schools in Paoshan, too. I am the leader of all of them. Wang carries messages for me.”

His restlessness overcame him. He stood up and walked to the window and back. She watched him, smiling fondly. She knew it was boyish showing off. She did not know how much of it to believe.

“I want to make a student strike this winter,” he said. “I think I will make it about the poetry.” He was tugging at his scarf. “Do not fear Mr. Mills, Miss Eckert. Perhaps I will make him go away and demand that you be principal.”

“Oh no! I couldn’t possibly.”

“You could. Mr. Mills is stupid.”

“Many good people are going to seem stupid to you, Cho-jen. You are a rather special person.”

“I know I am,” he said seriously. “But you are not stupid.”

“What is the Kuomintang?” she asked.

His face lighted. “It is the People’s Nation Party,” he said. “We have secret student groups everywhere in China. Soon we will make China into a Being, too. We will sweep away all the warlords.” He paced again. He could hardly contain the excitement the thought roused in him. “We will send away all the foreign gunboats and soldiers. We will make the same kind of laws against Americans that America makes against Chinese. We will send away all the criminal and stupid and greedy Americans.”

“I wish you luck. I hope you can do it, Cho-jen.”

He put his foot up on a chair and rested his arms on his knee. “You must stay and help us, Miss Eckert. We make plans at night. We want to make all the big American staff houses into a girls’ school, so our sisters can be educated too. We have begun to think of you doing that for us.” His smile was serious now, but unreservedly warm and friendly. She felt strongly the foreshadowing of his inborn power to command the spirits of other persons. “We will protect you,” he
said. “From Mr. Mills and from Mr. Craddock too. Many of the Chinese staff are with us in secret. We are already more powerful than you would believe.”

“I believe.” She could not help believing. “I want to stay and help,” she said.

“I must go. I am very busy.”

He picked up his books. He was all a boy again, careless and happy. He went out the door, smiling back at her and raising his hand. On boyish impulse … or was it the calculation of genius … he had spilled his treasure of secrets out before her and she knew she was bound to absolute secrecy. She could not even mention it to Mr. Gillespie. Cho-jen was more than just a boy. He would not fit any ready-made category. He left her feeling somewhat as if huge old China had regarded her gravely and found her good.

She knew she was going to treasure that feeling.

The Sand Pebbles thought Burgoyne was crazy because he had not collected his purchased due from Maily. When they learned that he intended to marry her, they knew that he was crazy. It was the sole topic at their forum around the mess table for a whole week. Burgoyne took all the joking with his customary mild good humor.

“It’s like a time’s come for me. A bell struck,” he said once. “I got to do it. That’s all.”

“Frenchy’s in love,” Farren said.

“He’s kept it in his pants too long and his brain’s addled,” Harris said. He turned to Burgoyne. “Plug her a couple of times and you’ll be all right,” he told him.

“Sam, what does a crude bastard like you know about love?” Wilsey asked.

Harris bristled. “I know all about love. Love is just a mental hard-on,” he said. “Any old whore can cure it for you.”

“No joking, Frenchy, why don’t you just shack up?” Farren said. “You know they ain’t going to change a United States law just for you.”

“I want a preacher to say the words over us,” Burgoyne said.

None of the Changsha missionaries would say the words. They all wanted a paper from the consulate or the ship granting civil or military permission. That was against the Asiatic Exclusion Act, and Burgoyne could not get permission. The fight over Maily was a scandal all over Changsha. The missionaries knew about Maily.

“They all figure Maily’s a whore, and they treat me like I wasn’t no better,” Burgoyne told Holman.

It was old custom for missionaries to despise sailors. The navy would not let an enlisted man marry until he was a second-class petty officer, and by then he was supposed to be seasoned enough to know better. If he didn’t, he had better not expect any official favors just because he had a wife. Good sailors were supposed to make do with whores. That was one reason the missionaries despised them. But most sailors considered that the navy was protecting them.

Burgoyne’s troubles revived the argument as to whether or not Lynch was really married. The Sand Pebbles did not think so. Just saying the words over a couple did not make them married, not
Russian
words, anyway, such as were said over Lynch. There was some doubt about English words.

“Well, what is it makes you really married?” Holman demanded.

Nobody could say. Then Restorff cleared his throat. “I think you ain’t really married unless the woman can have you put in jail if you don’t give her money,” he said.

“Gunner, you’re the only sensible man at this table!” Farren said.

Burgoyne wanted the words said over them anyway. The missionaries would not say plainly that they were forbidden to say the words without a license, Burgoyne told Holman, but they acted as if that were so.

“There’s one guy out south of town said he wanted to think it over, pray on it, he told me,” Burgoyne said. “I’m going out there this afternoon. He’s my last chance.”

“I’d like to go with you,” Holman said.

The Reverend Mr. Partridge talked to Holman and Burgoyne in a small room with a rag rug and a sign on the wall stating that God
was Love. He made them sit in rocking chairs while he paced up and down and explained that his conscience would not let him perform the ceremony without civil permission. He was a kindly, pink-faced man with a clipped gray mustache and a gray coat. Burgoyne looked defeated. Holman spoke up.

“Would you get in trouble if you did it anyway?”

“Yes. With my conscience. I’ve explained that.”

“I mean with American law.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I want to understand something,” Holman said. “Can I ask you some questions?”

“Please do.” Mr. Partridge went on guard.

“All right.” Holman leaned forward. “If you did speak the words, would that make them really married?”

“In the eyes of God, yes.”

“Suppose they were going to live together anyway. How would that be, in the eyes of God?”

Mr. Partridge paced with tightening lips and thought about that. Then he stopped, hands clasped behind him and bouncing slightly on his toes.

“It would be breaking the Seventh Commandment,” he said. “But to enter into a vowed marriage knowing that it cannot endure and be fruitful is to make a false personal pledge before God, and that is a greater sin.” He pursed his lips. “Now that I think of it, I am not at all sure such a marriage would be valid in the eyes of God, Who knows all the secrets of men’s hearts.”

His posture and manner irritated Holman. “Suppose Frenchy and the girl believed in their hearts, as deep as even God can see, that they would stay married till they died,” he said. “Would it be a greater sin then? If you did say the words?”

“Yes, and I would share it!” His voice was sharp. “Because I would know! And your friend knows too, because I’ve explained to him.”

Burgoyne stirred. “Nothing you told me makes any difference,” he said. “I’m going to retire and live in China like lots of other sailors do. I want to be married to my woman is all.”

“I see it’s no use explaining.”

“Can I pin just one thing down, Mr. Partridge?” Holman said. “What is it really makes you married, God or American law? What if they disagree?”

Mr. Partridge was trying very hard to continue looking kindly. “If you are honestly interested, I will be glad to instruct you,” he said. “But you would have to start with simple things.” He tried another smile. “We must all learn to walk before we run, mustn’t we?”

Holman hid his anger. “Please tell me the answer like you would if I was ready to understand,” he said. “If I don’t, I don’t. We’ll shove off. But please let me try.”

“All right.” Mr. Partridge paced again, throwing out short sentences. “Marriage is not an indulgence. It is a sacred privilege. Yes, and responsibility. There is something called moral fitness and readiness for marriage. Marriage and the rearing of lawful children. Part of it is a sober regard for the opinions of one’s fellow countrymen. That, and a willingness to obey the laws they make to govern themselves.” He stopped and rocked on his toes. “Is that clear to you?”

“Just like crystal!” Holman stood up and tugged Burgoyne to his feet. “So Congress outranks God,” he told Mr. Partridge. “Thanks for the dope.”

“Here now, let’s not have any mockery or blasphemy under this roof!”

Holman laughed into the red, angry face. “If I was you, Partridge, I’d get out of the God business and go run for Congress,” he said. “Come on, Frenchy.”

The Reverend Mr. Partridge slammed his door very emphatically at their heels.

They stopped in the bar of the small hotel outside the south gate and ordered whisky. They were alone in the place.

“He just rubbed me the wrong way,” Holman said. “One of them fat, pink, kindly important bastards that run the world and heaven and hell to boot. He reminds me of somebody. Bronson?” He drained his glass and beckoned the bar boy. “Who ever gave them bastards charge of the world?”

“God did, I guess,” Burgoyne said. “Jake, I was just thinking howcome I first joined the navy. It was to get away from a little old gal back in Carolina that claimed I knocked her up. Maybe I did, but there was twenty other boys had their crack at it too. She was a real whore, and they was going to
make
me marry her.”

“That’s how the sons of bitches work,” Holman said. “It was a judge put me in the navy. It was that, or else reform school.”

“What’d they have you for?”

“Beating up—say! Now I know who Partridge reminds me of!”

Holman sketched out the story. A boy had brought a bottle of whisky to a class wiener roast and some of them got drunk and insulted girls and fought. Holman had been expelled for it. He had gone to the principal’s office and begged for another chance.

“School was the first thing I ever had to lose,” he told Burgoyne. “That principal—Partridge reminds me of him. The kids called him Garbage Tin.”

Garbage Tin had plainly enjoyed making him grovel. It was a nasty, squirmish thing. Then Garbage Tin had promised to cancel the expulsion if Holman would sign a paper saying how sorry he was that he had brought the whisky to the party. He had not brought it, but he couldn’t rat on the boy who had, and he finally signed the paper for the sake of getting back in school. The next day he found that he was still expelled. Garbage Tin said he had only promised to reconsider his decision, and he had done that, and it was still the same decision. Holman did not have anything left to lose. He had gone at Garbage Tin like a wildcat and driven him under a desk.

“Didn’t you have any kin to stand up for you?”

“Only my mother,” Holman said. “She didn’t count for much in that town. She did housework by the hour and took in washing.”

“That’s nigger-woman work in Carolina.”

“The kid that brought the whisky was Bill Mason. He was the judge’s son.”

“They had to save his face so he could be a judge someday,” Burgoyne said. “Well, that’s how the sons of bitches work, all right. Well, I guess you don’t have to love ’em for it.”

“They expect you to,” Holman said. “They think they’re the most loving and lovable bastards alive.”

The two men drank in moody silence. Holman was thinking.

“Frenchy, why not have a Chinese priest marry you?” he said. “They got all kinds of gods.”

“I never thought.” Burgoyne tugged his mustache. “I wonder …”

“There’s one they call Kwan Yin. I like her statues,” Holman said. “I tell you, let’s ask Po-han about it when he comes home.”

“Let’s do that!”

They bought bottled beer on the way. The day was cold and early dark. They met Po-han in the street, just coming home. The women were all in Maily’s room putting up wallpaper. The men helped finish the job by lamplight, while the children laughed and played with scraps of paper. The paper was a silvery gray with a wide-spaced pattern of green leaves and red berries and they all thought it looked very good. Then Po-han’s women went home, taking the children and their lamps.

“Sit down, Po-han. Have a beer,” Burgoyne said.

“I’m all smeared,” Maily said. “Excuse me while I wash my hands and change clothes.” She had on a plain blue coolie outfit.

“No. Sit here beside me, on the chest.”

Burgoyne shifted to make room and pulled her down beside him. The room seemed dim and shadowy with Maily’s one little lamp. They all sat at the table and drank beer and Burgoyne asked Po-han about getting married in a Chinese temple. The talk seemed to embarrass Po-han. He said Chinese did not get married in temples. He did not think Burgoyne and Maily could be married the Chinese way.